The Nur Ein is an eight round song competition. In each round, the participants are given a song title and a mandatory challenge and are given a week in which to finish that song. Then this year's group of Nur Ein Judges (TBA) will listen to the songs and rate them from best to worst. Each round whittles down the field until we are left with only 1 competitor. Creativity x Skill x Time Management = Nur Ein!

Nur Ein XIV will begin on Monday, April 22nd with Round Zero. Round Zero is the way you enter the competition. The participants will have until April 29th at 12:01AM (Eastern Daylight Time) to create a song from the title and complete the challenge. When a competitor completes a song, it is to be e-mailed to nurein.sidefight which is a gmail address. The songs will then be posted at the Nur Ein website (http://nurein.songlander.com) and the next title and challenge will be announced at the same time.
The Judges will have the next two days to listen to the songs. They will rank the songs from best to worst. If there are more than 25 entries into Round zero, the judges will eliminate the lowest ranked competitors until we reach 25.

The final round is a battle between the two remaining competitors with the votes of the eliminated competitors and the Nur Ein Judges choosing the winner (one vote per "act," whether you're a band or a solo competitor; if you're a duo, trio, quartet, quintet, or more, you'll need to discuss internally how to allocate that one vote).

The game is on. Nur Ein!!!!!!!!!!!

Now is the time for people to start getting prepared. The website logistics need to get figured out. And the judges need to get chosen.

A reminder: if you’re entering a song for Nur Ein, remember to do an ID fir the listening party and send me a link. It can be as simple as your band name and ‘You’re listening to Nur Ein’, or something more complex, as Paco del Stinko and others have done over the years.

I’m working on elements for the shows, so sooner is better than later. Thanks!

Chumpy looks like he's a judge. (we should do fast power pop and pay attention meter)
Spintown? Did he end up a judge? (we should focus heavily on lyrics and odd instruments: banjo, mandolin, fiddle, etc)
Roymond?
j$- I assume j$ is a judge

Man Glut- is not a judge according to New Ugly
Ben - is not a judge. (why isn't he a judge, he listens and reviews anyway?)

I just wanted to say much earlier than usual, thank you to the judges for all their work. The bulk of that work is happening up front in these early rounds with >20 songs. It's a thankless job slogging through everything and trying to come up with a meaningful ranking of so many entries, plus trying to write reviews. It was really great to read/hear reviews from all five judges for round zero. I feel like (and I haven't gone back to look so this could be inaccurate) it's been quite a while since we had reviews from all the judges for any round, so thanks in particular for that.

I think rounds 0 and 1 are the most important rounds for judge reviews. I don't know you. [Tho the podcasts help]. This year I thought I wouldn't look at any of the reviews during the challenge, or listen to the podcasts, but I realized, "If I'm doing something wrong, this may be my best chance for feedback."